Best known for her landmark play “Black Girl”, j.e. franklin is founder of the Blackgirl Ensemble Theatre in NYC and a faculty member of the Harlem School of the Arts. J. e. franklin has earned acclaim for her uncompromising depictions of contemporary African American life. Her plays and other writings examine themes of identity, family relationships, and oppression. They portray both the dreams and the harsh realities that shape the experience of African-Americans in the decades after the Civil Rights Movement.

In 1972 Black Girl became a feature film, with a screen adaptation by franklin, featuring a star-studded cast and direction by Ossie Davis. Over the next four decades, Franklin received many awards for playwriting, among them a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship (1979), a Rockefeller Fellowship (1980), and the John F. Kennedy New American Play Award. She has taught at a number of academic institutions, including Lehman College, the University of Iowa, and Touro College. In addition to Black Girl, many of her plays have been produced at theatres around the country: A First Step to Freedom (1964), The In-Crowd (1964), Four Women (1973), MacPilate (1974), The Prodigal Sister (1974), Miss Honey’s Young’uns (1984), The Onliest-One Who Can’t Go Nowhere (1992), Christchild (1992), Mother, Dear Mother, I Still Think of Thee (2015), That’s Why They Calls Us Colored: Bless They Hearts (2017).